116 ON THE STUDY OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES BY YOUTH. 



dition to which is the main design of these pages. This 

 extension, however, of the original design, is in perfect ac- 

 cordance with the views of the parties who have concurred in 

 this publication. Engaged in professional life, and necessarily 

 devoting their specific attention, and confining their active ex- 

 ertion, to the occupations they have respectively adopted, they 

 are desirous, notwithstanding, of doing this in the most liberal 

 manner, and with constant reference to the higher institutions 

 of the country, and to the higher cultivators and patrons of 

 Education and of Science, who are engaged in upholding those 

 institutions. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have 

 already received their just meed of praise, in reviewing the 

 advantages of Academical Education, in preparing the mind 

 for the study of the Physical Sciences ; and the founders of the 

 University of London have prepared the way for a future 

 still more complete union of knowledge applied to Liberal 

 Education. The Conductors of the Schools of Hazelwood 

 and Bruce Castle, and the Author of this Memoir, wish to be 

 understood, as desirous of furnishing the means of elementary 

 Education in every department of study pursued in the Uni- 

 versities and other great establishments of the country : To be- 

 hold the students who have received their initiatory education 

 under their care, become proficient and distinguished in the 

 pursuits or professions which they may eventually adopt, under 

 the Discipline and the Professors of those Institutions, will be 

 at once the desired result, and the grateful reward, of their own 

 labours. 



To what extent the study of the Physical Sciences, at School, 

 may profitably be allowed to take the place of any other branch 

 of knowledge, is not for the Conductors or for the Teacher to 

 decide ; that point must be left, altogether, for the considera- 

 tion of the friends of their pupils. They are only desirous of 

 offering one remark upon this head. The most weighty ob- 

 jection, perhaps, which can be urged, by those who adequately 

 appreciate the value of the Physical Sciences, to their adop- 

 tion as a branch of General Education, is the space of time, 

 already short, which the occupations of life, in many cases, 

 permit to be devoted to the intellectual instruction of youth 

 designed for them. This objection would apply, with the 

 greatest force, to those who are destined for business or for 

 commerce, many of whom terminate their education at School. 

 Now it is precisely to youth of this class, it may be ob- 

 served, that the study of the Physical Sciences will be most 

 extensively useful, while, to them, the knowledge of the Dead 

 Languages seldom can be important, and is in fact scarcely 

 ever retained by them in after-life. With respect to pupils of 



